


Just A Touch

by stileskolpath



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s03e07 Currents, Hurt Derek, M/M, One Shot, Stiles Helps Derek, canon sterek moment, teen wolf 3x07, teen wolf episode continuation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-26
Updated: 2013-07-26
Packaged: 2017-12-21 09:10:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/898505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stileskolpath/pseuds/stileskolpath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Continuation on Teen Wolf 3x07: "Currents"</p>
<p>My thoughts on how the whole Stiles-touching-Derek thing went down. Sorry if it is too emotionally descriptive/doesn’t go anywhere. But that was the point. There wasn’t really a progression here, but I tried to end on a good note nonetheless. </p>
<p>Enjoy!</p>
<p>-Stiles Kolpath</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just A Touch

No. Boyd. No. Derek’s mind was surprisingly empty. Except for the fact Boyd was dead. He had killed him. He tried to deny it, but Derek knew it was true each time he looked again at the body sprawled out in front of him. I did it. I killed him. Derek didn’t know what to do with himself. As the seconds dragged on, his mind began to fill with a wash of emotions. He forgot that he had essentially absorbed what power Boyd had through his hands. But he still felt weak. He felt wrong. He just took a life. He had done it before. But it was different. It was always someone who had hurt him, his family, or someone he cared about. But this was different. This was one that he was supposed to be able to protect. He had owed Boyd that much. The thought made Derek feel worse. Like he was falling, but never really hitting the ground. He felt the tears coming to his eyes, and his heart sink into his stomach as more emotion poured in through the channel he had created with Boyd when he killed him.

**

In reality, Derek didn’t kill anybody. Kali, Ethan, and Aiden had held his claws open, and the female alpha had thrown the stunned beta onto them. Stiles had seen it. He knew that the alpha would not be able to stop blaming himself for it. He slowly approached Derek, who was kneeling on his water-logged floor, utterly defeated, shivering from the cold, from being drenched in water, and from the realization of what he thought he just did. He stood over Derek’s shoulder, looking at the same body of the beta, half-submerged in the water. Boyd’s last words had been ‘it’s okay.’ Stiles couldn’t help choke back his own tears. He knew that the beta was finally home. With his sister. With Erica. No longer in pain. It was the briefest, smallest glimmer of hope, but Stiles clung to it. He hoped Derek would too. But he knew better. And that was why he laid a hesitant hand on the alpha’s shoulder.

**

Derek felt the warmth. As cold as he was, the heat from Stiles’ hand was almost welcome. But he barely noticed it. He was too busy trying to will Boyd back into life. To blink his eyes and see his beta open his own, offer a hand, and let Derek pull him back to his feet. But it was no use. Nothing he could do would bring back the dead. Not his family. Not Erica. Not Boyd.

Then, because his mind was not letting go, Derek remembered Erica. She had been Boyd’s closest thing to family. Derek could smell a mate-bond as strong as theirs would have been a mile away. They were meant to be together. The werewolf gave a quiet sob when he thought about how he didn’t get to Erica in time, that she had died as a result, and he had robbed Boyd of the only thing he had left to love. It is all my fault. It all came back down to that simple truth. It was all Derek’s fault. His family. Laura. Erica. Boyd. Hell, even Scott’s bite. Jackson. Lydia, Allison’s family. All of them. His mind was making the connections between all of them. They formed a web around Derek, passing through him. It was his fault they had died, that they had lost people that they cared about, that life for them had been irrevocably changed, and nothing would ever be the same.

He sank further into himself at the thought, disturbing the water around him. He willed himself to die. But his traitor body wouldn’t listen. He still sat there, on his knees, pain still etched into his face, drenched in the water that had been Boyd’s idea to beat Kali. 

He looked down at his hands, at the retracted claws, and realized that there was no blood on them. The water had even robbed him of the evidence. It had washed away Boyd’s life force, the scarlet reminder that Derek had been the one who drained it from him. It made Derek sick. His thoughts returned to dying. It would be better for everyone. No one else would get hurt. No one else would have their lives ruined by his poisonous touch. He thought about it until it drowned out everything else that he felt.

Then the warmth began to spread. It started in his shoulder, slowly trying to worm its way into his heart. It had found purchase somewhere, and was expanding outward, fighting to push out the cold, the pain, the fear, and anger that Derek felt. Derek didn’t want to feel it. He wanted to be left alone in the dark. But the warmth was persistent. And despite his shame, his guilt, and his need to blame himself, Derek felt it wrap tendrils around him, slowly, but surely, almost firmly, rooting him in place. It was pulling his mind back from the dark, trying to envelop it, to wrap it in an embrace that would make the alpha remember that it wasn’t his fault. That Boyd was dead because Kali made it so. There was no other reason.

**

Derek continued to sob quietly. Stiles could only see the back of his head, but he knew that the werewolf was in a great deal of pain. He could feel each shudder through his outstretched fingers. With each came a small, strangled sob. With each, Stiles knew, Derek was remembering the awful events that had happened to him, and to the people he loved. He knew the werewolf was adding this to the long list of things he blamed himself for. The thought made him sadder than anything he had felt before. And that was saying something, because Stiles was inconsolable when his mom had died. Because he understood what Derek was feeling. He had felt it himself.

He couldn’t let Derek succumb to that. He knew that once the alpha did, there would be no bringing him back. He would throw himself headlong into everything he could to remove the problem, which was, as he saw it, himself. Stiles couldn’t take it anymore. Derek had been doing that since Stiles had met the brooding werewolf.

He couldn’t let it happen. So he poured all of the feeling, all of the understanding, all of what he knew about himself, about Derek, about their weird little pack, and about the amount of love that existed throughout it into his hold on Derek. He knew it wouldn’t matter. But Stiles wanted to convey all that he knew he would have trouble putting to words into the touch. Maybe it would anchor Derek to the present. Just maybe. He squeezed his hand slightly over Derek’s shoulder. 

**

Derek felt Stiles squeeze his shoulder. As odd as it sounds, he knew the human understood what he was feeling. As much pain as he felt, Stiles’ touch helped to quell some of it. It was warming him. Not enough to make him feel better, but just enough to keep him from doing something, that he now realized, that would not save anyone, including himself. The darkness his mind threatened to dive into, that just moments ago, he was almost fully immersed into, was still there. But it was farther away than before.

Boyd still hurt, as did Erica. His family. Laura. Isaac. All of them. The pain was still there. But it was not as sharp. All from the simple hand on his shoulder. From Stiles. He knew that as much as he and Stiles hadn’t gotten along in the past, hated each other even, that the human cared about him, inexplicably. Normally that would be cause to make a person start feeling better. But it made Derek feel worse. Because he knew that there would come a time when Stiles would get hurt because of him too. Possibly even die. The thought made Derek’s stomach contort itself in anxiety, and brought a fresh wave of tears to his eyes. He couldn’t put a finger on why, exactly. But if Stiles got hurt because of him, he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself.

That was when Stiles reached down and wrapped himself around Derek’s neck. And Derek didn’t pull away, or growl, or even keep looking at Boyd’s body. Instead, he wrapped his hands around Stiles’ arms, clinging to them as everything hit him anew. The werewolf squeezed his eyes shut, willing the darkness to push his feelings from his mind. But Stiles was there, holding him tight, desperately trying to keep the fraying werewolf together. Trying to heal him.

Derek just didn’t realize it was working.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feel free to check out my tumblr for more Sterek stuff, fic recs, and some of my (even) shorter stories: watchthewolvesrun.tumblr.com


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